


Burn brighter than we ever have before

by Zoadgo



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Murphy has trust issues, Near Death Experience, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-02
Updated: 2015-10-02
Packaged: 2018-04-24 11:58:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4918639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoadgo/pseuds/Zoadgo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Murphy flees an unknown threat in the Promised Land, running right back to the desert that almost killed him the first time he crossed it. It seems intent on fixing its past failures, and Murphy isn't strong enough to fight it on his own, this time. But someone from his past offers him a chance to survive, and even to prosper in the Dead Zone. That is, if he can bring himself to trust someone who has already betrayed him once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burn brighter than we ever have before

The sun beating down on Murphy’s back drives all thought from his mind with its blistering heat. He wants to tear off his hoodie, rip all the fabric from his body in some fruitless attempt to cool down, and is only saved from being burned by the sun by the fact that doing so would take energy. Murphy doesn’t have any energy to spare.

His feet keep moving across the sands, regardless of the fact that he doesn’t remember telling them to do so. He doesn’t even remember getting up that morning. Perhaps he hadn’t, perhaps he had died in his sleep and this was his own personal hell. It would be fitting, isolation and a slow, torturous journey with no end in sight.

Murphy stumbles a bit, one of his feet not quite moving forward as much as it should have before planting itself on the ground. He catches himself before falling, although he ponders if falling and never getting up again might not be so bad. If the universe would even allow him the luxury of death; it hadn’t seemed to have ever wanted to do so before. He had considered it lucky the first time he’d escaped dying, but now he wonders if living isn’t the worse fate after all.

The only thing that keeps Murphy moving forward is the knowledge of what’s behind him. Vague memories, nothing allowed to be too intense in the pitiless wasteland that is the Dead Zone, of drones watching him constantly, of videos of suicides, of strange noises throughout the night that drove him to the edge of insanity. It is possible they drove him further than the edge, considering he had fled the relative safety of the Promised Land to return to this sand bound hell.

He stumbles again, and Murphy actually opens his eyes and focuses them on the terrain around him, rather than meandering on auto-pilot like a sleepwalking zombie. He sees primarily sand, which is unsurprising. Lots of bright sand, radiating heat, especially right in front of him. Well, that explains the stumbling, if he had been climbing a dune without realizing it. Murphy focuses his gaze on the top of the ridge and climbs it properly, the two stumbles having woken him up just enough to actually pay attention to something for at least a minute.

It takes more than that minute of focus for him to reach the top of the dune, and that’s how Murphy finds himself tumbling down in an avalanche of sand, his eyes clenched shut but still stinging from grit that worms its way in. He doesn’t try to stop himself in his descent, doesn’t have the energy to claw futilely at the dust. He simply falls until he lands at the base of the dune in an untidy heap, unable to rouse the energy to rise to his feet again. He shifts pathetically, the amount of effort required simply to get himself pointing away from the dune making him tremble.

He tries to crawl, tries to do anything to move across the sand, but it’s too much and he’s been far too long without food, water, or decent rest. He drags his body a few measly feet from the indent he had left, which the ever present wind is quickly working to erase. Murphy’s arms give out on him, his legs performing no better, and he simply lays on the desert ground and waits for that wind to bury him. Perhaps he’ll die before it does. If not, suffocation will take him quickly.

Blackness closes in around Murphy, more than just the slight reddish-grey that he achieves when closing his eyes, the sun unwilling to let him forget about it for even a second. It’s peaceful, quiet and cool, the complaints of his body barely registering against the comfort of the void. But they remain, just on the edge of his perception, annoying him and anchoring him when he wants nothing more than to flee into the dark, to get away from the world that has ground him down so much. The desiccation of his body isn’t enough to draw him away from the blackness, but it’s enough to prevent him from leaping into it with relief.

The balance between life and death, a state too passive to be called a battle by any means, maintains within Murphy for an eternity. He passes a century with each heartbeat, it seems, each breath taking a millennium to exhale. Time doesn’t cease to have meaning, it maintains its importance even as it loses its form to Murphy. He knows that if he waits long enough, he can get to the void, even though he thinks he’s passed that amount of time long ago.

Time doesn’t end up tipping the balance by allowing his final breath to spill into the sand. No, Murphy’s mind is wrenched back to his body, painfully reconnecting with scorched lungs, a laboured heart, and exhaustion that manifests as pain in every fiber of his being. He could cry for the loss of that soothing darkness, but the more the world returns to him, to more he forgets the feeling of relief. By the time he’s opened his eyes, Murphy thinks he simply fell asleep for a moment.

Opening his eyes doesn’t reveal anything new, but it brings enough awareness back to him that Murphy can tell what it was that woke him. Hands, one small and one large, gripping his arms tightly, and the feeling of movement. He’s being dragged across the sand, his mind belatedly puts together, and he tries to tilt his head back to see who it is that’s holding him. He doesn’t succeed in the slight tilt of his head he’d been attempting, but raising his chin from its resting place on his chest allows his head to fall back, a position he can see the other person from.

Tight wrapped grey clothing, ragged in places, but all in all giving the impression that it can hold up to anything that the wearer can. Brown hair sneaking out from beneath fabric wrapped around the person’s head and mouth, leaving only a small amount of skin near their eyes exposed. The person keeps glancing back over their shoulder, probably to check where they’re going, but he thinks he sees a hint of a tattoo. When they eventually glance down and see that his eyes are opened, he manages to see their eyes properly, and some form of recognition sparks within him, not enough for his brain to actually make a thought of, yet.

“You’re awake. Good.” 

Definitely a female voice, and familiar. Murphy can practically feel himself trying to connect everything together. He knows that he knows her, but he can’t remember, the thought just out of reach of a mind that had tried to shut down moments ago. 

“Your heart was beating, but out here that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re alive.”

There’s a slight breath of air at the end of that, almost a chuckle that flashes a memory into Murphy’s thoughts. Walking across the desert with a group, and a girl walking beside him. They weren’t laughing or trading jokes, exactly, but they were smiling. She had smiled with him, and she hadn’t rejected him.

“E-” Murphy’s voice isn’t even a whisper, so he closes his mouth a forces his dried throat to approximate a swallow before trying again, “E…mor...i.”

An affirmative hum is all the response Emori gives him as she looks over her shoulder again. It occurs to Murphy that she probably doesn’t have to drag him anymore, considering he’s no longer unconscious, but the thought of walking again is far less than pleasant, so he doesn’t mention it.

“You… gon… kill me… this... time?” Speaking hurts, but it gets slightly easier as his vocal cords reorient themselves with use. He hadn’t spoken since his third night in the Promised Land, drunkenly shouting at fate itself for the hand it had dealt him.

“No,” Emori looks down at him and meets his eyes before continuing, “I’m not sorry for what I did to you, back then. We do what we need to in order to survive out here. But in the Dead Zone, our pasts don’t have to influence our future.”

“Poetic,” Murphy chokes out a laugh that sounds more like a cough and tears at his throat. “I don’t… blame you… I should have… expected it.”

“The world is hard, John, but it doesn’t always have to be cruel.” 

Murphy almost corrects her on his name, but he find he doesn’t mind it from her. His response is simply a disbelieving snort that sounds nothing like it should, distorted by dried airways. Before he can find the words to tell her how very wrong she is, their conversation, such as it is, is interrupted by a shout in the Grounder language of which Murphy only knows a few words. Emori drops Murphy’s arms and he doesn’t react quickly enough to prevent himself from landing on his back in the sand as she turns, pulling out her knife and crouching slightly between Murphy and the man who had shouted. 

Murphy manages to roll himself onto his stomach in order to see what’s happening, because the rapid exchange of foreign words gives him no clues as to if he’s about to be killed or not. And as appealing as death may be, he doesn’t really want to die by someone else’s hand when he’s too weak to even try to defend himself. He doesn’t know why the distinction between a knife killing him in his current state or the sand and sun doing so matters to him, but it does.

The man shouts and gestures wildly with a gun, and Murphy thinks he may have been the rider who had ambushed them with Emori, but he can’t be certain. Emori responds to the man’s anger with sharp words and a deadly calm in her stance, still prepared for a fight, but not trying to start one as the man seems to be. It seems as if Emori is protecting Murphy, for now, and he wonders if she knows he has nothing to offer her in exchange for it.

Murphy understands about as much of the conversation as the sand beneath him does, but the man doesn’t try to use his gun or advance towards Emori. Eventually, he throws his arms in the air and spits in Murphy’s general direction before turning on his heel and stalking away, slipping over a small mound of sand and disappearing from view. Emori straightens and sheathes her knife at her waist again, apparently content with the resolution of the conflict. Her attention falls back on Murphy quickly.

“Can you walk?” She strides over to him, and Murphy knows that even at his best, he’d never walked as gracefully over the sands as she does. They shift too frequently and unreliably to ever be truly certain of your footing, at least that’s what Murphy had thought.

“Maybe.” Murphy tries to push himself to his feet, but hardly even manages to get his knees under him before he’s shaking and panting with exertion. He keeps straining his muscles, determined to get back on his feet, hoping that the small amount of rest he’s had has made up for the lack of food and water.

Suddenly, an arm wraps around his back, gripping his ribs just beneath his armpits and providing him support. Murphy freezes for a moment, uncertain of what to do, before following his instincts and putting his arm around Emori’s shoulder. With her help, he manages to get to his feet. She relaxes her grip slightly, but she doesn’t let him go, and Murphy is glad of that. He can keep his feet in their correct place if he has her to lean on, and he’s uncertain of what would happen if he didn’t.

“Don’t bother talking to Braham, he doesn’t speak your language. It’s probably best if you don’t look at him, either. He thinks I’m a fool for not killing you and stripping you of all you own.” 

“Nice guy.” 

Murphy ends up sucking breaths in through his open mouth due to the effort of talking and walking at the same time, and he catches Emori turning to look at him, a small crease between her eyebrows. She reaches over with her free hand and pushes his chin gently to close his mouth. “Don’t do that, you’ll lose water.” 

She waits until Murphy nods before turning her head back along their path, tugging him slightly to bring him up the same hill of dust that Braham had left over. “And of course he’s not nice. Nice gets you nothing out here, except for bruises.”

Murphy swears he can see a hint of a smile in the crinkles at the corner of her eyes, and he rolls his eyes. Part of him is annoyed at her reminding him of when she had betrayed him and hit him in the face, and her evident fondness for that memory. But another part of him remembers that she had told him the way to the Promised Land, and picks up on the fact that she had just implied she thought he was nice. That section of his mind is very pleased with the smile in her eyes.

Once they get over the crest of the hill, which takes a long time given Murphy’s current state, he sees a sort of small valley behind it, a little cupped area carved out by the winds and now protected by the dunes around it. And in the heart of it is a pile of gear and a familiar cart, and of course Braham, sitting on the edge of the cart and sharpening his knife. Murphy’s been tortured by Grounders enough times that the simple intimidation tactic fails to frighten him. There’s no way that Braham can be as bad as Tristan was, if it should ever come to him using that knife on him. Murphy would like to believe that Emori would protect him, but he had thought he’d had friends before, only to have them leave him in the forest to die.

Emori leads Murphy down to the gear, helping him to sit down and lean against a pile of packs. He hears Braham snort and throw a word at Murphy, one he had heard many times before. _Branwada._ Murphy still doesn’t know what it means, but the tone is the same each time it’s used, and he assumes it’s not anything nice.

Emori leaves him at his packs, and Murphy ignores the insult because his will to survive wins out against his urge to be sarcastic. He simply watches Emori cross to the cart, shoving Braham’s shoulder roughly aside in order to reach past him. There’s another quick exchange of Grounder words, which Emori seems to win again, Braham shaking his head and focusing his attention back on his knife. 

Murphy pushes himself slightly more upright as he sees what’s in Emori’s hands as she returns to him, his gaze fixating on the metal cannister in her gloved hand, and the familiar brown plastic in the other. Murphy had thought he was sick of the COMPRESSED NUTRITION WAFERS, as the brown packages back in the Promised Land had proclaimed them to be, but now he can’t think of a more delightful thing in the world to eat. The thought of the water he can hear sloshing when Emori kneels next to him temporarily drives the concept of food from his mind, however, his throat impossibly feeling drier in the presence of something that may help.

“Drink slowly, and do not spill any.” Emori holds the container of water up, but she moves it out of reach with a crease forming between her eyebrow again when he grabs for it, and Murphy nods. When she still holds it out of reach, he works up a few words around his all-consuming thirst.

“Okay, I won’t spill.” 

Emori nods at that and hands him the water bottle, and Murphy trembles in his eagerness to remove the top of it.

Once he does get it open, however, he doesn’t chug it like he wants to. He remembers all too distinctly his second day in the Promised Land, when he had paid the price for overstuffing himself on rations and imbibing too much of the scotch, curled up at the toilet and cursing his life as his stomach staged a revolution. He sips at the water under Emori’s careful supervision, each drop of the distinctly gritty liquid like a pure drop of heaven itself. When she motions for him to stop, as much as Murphy doesn’t want to, he obeys.

Only when the container is closed and in Emori’s hands again does she hand him the brown package, which turns out not to be the crackers Murphy’s familiar with. Once the plastic coating is ripped apart in his hands, hunger now making itself known again quite urgently, it reveals two lumpy bars with a slight shine to them, fruit pebbled through a mixture of nuts and something light brown that Murphy can’t identify. Despite not knowing what’s in the bars, he eagerly lifts one to his mouth and bites into it, and the first small nibble is quickly followed by the rest of the heavenly, sweet bar. Its mate is devoured even more quickly, and Murphy licks the remanents of the sweet binding agent used in them from the wrapper before Emori takes it from him, handing him back the water bottle for another few careful sips.

When Emori takes the bottle back from him, the wrapper from his meal having disappeared into one of the nearly invisible pockets in her outfit, she shifts to lean on one of the packs beside him, reaching up to lower her mouth covering as the sky begins to darken slightly from its blinding blue. Murphy moves in order to look at her, the motion infinitely easier now that his cells have more to go off of than fear and stupidity. He’s tired, but not the same sort of painful exhaustion he’d been experiencing not too long ago, so studying Emori as she stares at the sky is easy to push off sleep for now.

Everything about her is the same as he remembers, her tattoo curling around her eye, the scars crossing her cheekbone, the sense in every inch of her pose that she’s a woman who’s been through hell at least once and doesn’t shrink from the idea of going there again. He catches himself briefly wondering how things might have played out if she had come with them, if more of them might have made it through the journey, or if they all would have perished. He sniffs his nose slightly and swallows, the feeling much more satisfying now that he’s somewhere close to being hydrated.

“Why?” He only asks one word, it’s the only thing he wants to know right now, but it’s more than one question. Why did she betray them, why did she tell him where to go, why did she save him. He doesn’t know which of them he hopes she will answer, doesn’t know what he wants to know more.

“Why what?” Emori sighs slightly, never taking her eyes off the darkening sky. “I robbed you because I had to, being a raider is the only way to live any sort of a life out here. Scavengers and pilgrims are just prolonging their deaths, not living. If you’re wondering why I saved you, just look around.”

Murphy does so as she pauses, eyes sliding over no less than twenty bulging packs and noting the pile of old rugs, possibly covering something, in the cart. It looks to be more than they could reasonably carry, if he’s being quite honest. Pulling the cart when it was mostly empty was difficult for four people to do, he can’t imagine two doing it with it heavily laden.

“We have enough to live in luxury, for a while. When we stole from you, we were desperate. Now we aren’t. We have food and water, and things to trade with the smarter scavengers who hide their treasures until you pay for them. But our horse is gone, so right now a person is of more use to us than your clothes would have been.”

Murphy huffs a bitter chuckle and rolls onto his back, watching pink haze in the sky slowly shifting to orange. “Of course, you saved me because it was practical.”

“What were you expecting?” He swears he can feel Emori looking at him then, but he keeps his eyes on the sky far above him. 

“I don’t know.” 

Emori doesn’t press him for details, and Murphy decides he doesn’t want to know why she told him which way the Promised Land was. He shouldn’t have been trying to talk to her, staring up at the encroaching stars as if they were friends. He should have known better, should have realized by now that the only reason anyone ever keeps him around is because he serves some purpose to them or their cause. It’s a bitter thing to realize, but at least Emori doesn’t treat him like dirt, like “his” people had.

Perhaps serving a purpose might not be so bad, if he does so next to Emori. And there’s always the option to run once he has his strength back, taking his chances with Clarke or with the drones. Contemplating what his future might hold, Murphy drifts off to sleep under Emori’s watchful eye. 

```

Murphy wakes to the sound of soft voices, making certain he doesn’t move right away. Because the voices are speaking in the Grounder language, and the last time he’d woken up with words like that falling on his ears, it had been in his best interest to seem unconscious for as long as possible. It takes a moment for his mind to catch up with the events of the previous day, more than half of which seem to be no more real than a vibrant dream. He cracks his eyes open once he remembers that he’s not a prisoner, at least not in the way he had been before.

Emori and Braham are sitting next to each other on top of one of the closer dunes, facing out from the makeshift camp towards the rest of the Dead Zone, their voices carrying easily in the silence of the desert. Murphy can’t make out any of it, save his name or a word that sounds damn near like it once or twice, but he’s thankful for them talking. It allows him to stand up painfully slowly, making very little sound and not enough for them to hear over their own voices.

He walks over to the cart where most of the supplies seem to be stored, searching for one thing in particular, which ends up being easier to find than he had feared it might be. Before Murphy even reaches the cart, a glint of sunlight reflecting off of metal draws his attention to one of the pack, with the very object he’s looking for poking out from the edge of the opening, as if it wanted him to find it. He makes his way to that bag even more quietly, kneeling beside it and taking his sweet time removing the small, shiny knife from it, and hiding it in his boot. He’s not quite planning on using it, but it’s been a long time since Murphy was comfortable not having a knife on him at all times, and some food and a sip of water isn’t enough to shake his unease over being without weapons.

Murphy takes slightly less care slipping back to his sleeping area, and barely manages to sit down before his rustling draws Emori’s attention to him from the desert. Her mask is lowered and he wonders what the criteria for having it up is, vague curiosity inspired. If it’s something important, and he doesn’t plan on using the knife to get away from them, maybe he should figure out how to manufacture a mask of his own. It can’t be harder than making weapons with the delinquents was, and he’d actually sort of enjoyed that.

There’s a smile just hinting at the corner of Emori’s lips as she walks over to Murphy, leaving Braham staring away from camp by himself. He’s uncertain of if it’s due to the conversation she just had, or the fact that he’s awake, and speculating on the latter is a dangerous path to tread. Murphy very consciously tells himself not to get too attached, even if he decides to stay with the pair, because nothing good has ever come of that. But it’s hard to be angry at someone who throws him a water bottle and a pack of food as he stretches to feign having just woken up, so Murphy tries to settle on being polite, or as polite as he ever is, but not hopeful.

“I worried you were never going to wake,” Emori’s voice sounds clearer to Murphy’s ears when she switches to English, although he’s uncertain if that’s the language itself or simply him enjoying understanding it. Emori crouches across from him as Murphy tears into the food. “You’ve slept through almost the entire day.”

“I guess I needed the rest.” Murphy doesn’t feel like he’s slept that long, but the sun does seem to be getting mighty close to the tallest dune around them, so he has no reason to doubt Emori. He finishes his meal quickly, and Emori takes the wrapper of it from him as he sips the water slowly, watching her tuck it into one of her pockets. 

“Do you feel better, now?” Murphy nods slightly in response, and Emori looks pleased with that, “Good, because you start sharing watch with me, tonight. There’s more danger in the darkness, and I feel that you and Braham would not make the best sentry team.”

“What makes you think I won’t try to kill you and escape?” Murphy has no intention of doing such a thing, but he’s suspicious of the fact that Emori seems so willing to trust him. Emori doesn’t seem put off by the question, simply ticking off points on her fingers.

“You don’t know your way in the desert, the chances of surprising me are slim and I’m a better fighter than you, you’re unarmed, and you trusted us enough to sleep for so long, so I feel we can trust you. Plus, you are not actually a prisoner, you could leave at any time, without any provisions.” Emori displays the five fingers she’d tapped with each point, and then shrugs as she pushes to her feet. “You may still try to kill us, but the life of a Raider is one of risks, and you’re a risk I’m willing to take, John.”

Murphy doesn’t want to acknowledge the feeling that blazes inside of him at that, at least not in relation to Emori saying she considers him a risk worth taking, so he redirects it to thinking about life as a Raider. It is clearly a hazardous life, but Murphy tries to think of anything else he could do and comes up blank. He can’t face the forest, not with the memories of pain and blood that those trees hold, and going back to the drones and whatever the Promised Land had been is not an option. For the sake of his sanity, Murphy decides he might as well stay in the scorching purity of the Dead Zone.

Emori beckons to Murphy from the top of a hill of sand, and he goes to her, passing Braham on the way. He feels that the Grounder is sizing him up, as he slows slightly, meeting his gaze with a challenging stare. If Murphy wants to take on the risks of being a Raider, he’ll have to do it with these two, and that won’t happen if Braham thinks he’s just Emori’s pet project. Murphy realizes that all Braham knows of him is that Emori once held a knife to his throat and they robbed his group clean, and that he had to be nursed back to life by Emori last night. In retrospect, he understands why Braham may have thought they were better off leaving him to die, and he tries to inform him with a glare that the assumption that Murphy’s any form of weak is not a safe one to hold.

They actually pause in their respective paths for a tense moment, in which Murphy becomes keenly aware of how much large than him Braham is, and desperately tries not to show that sudden realization. It doesn’t really matter that much to him, Murphy’s never been one to play with favourable odds. He hopes that comes across in their silent measuring of each other. Braham is the one to break their staring contest, nodding with a grunt that almost sounds satisfied, and walking past Murphy to the camp. Murphy’s not certain if Braham actually approves of him, or if he wants him to, but he’s relatively confident that he at least sees him as something more than useless now.

Murphy vaguely notices that he leaves far more defined tracks in the sand than either Emori or Braham, and he wonders how long it will be before he can move as lightly as they seem to. There are secrets to living in the desert that they seem to know, ease of movement perhaps being the least critical of them, and Murphy knows that he has to learn them if he’s to be able to live in the Dead Zone. He doesn’t like being bound to the pair by his own incompetence at surviving in the environment, but he’s not stupid enough to think he can do it on his own, after how close to death he’s come every time he’s tried to cross the sands.

The sun’s descent has begun to change the colour of the sky by the time Murphy sits next to Emori in the sand. Sunset is a hazy palette of pastels shifting across the atmosphere in the Dead Zone, rather than the vibrant hues that had reigned over the forest, and Murphy decides he likes it. It’s different from the place that had caused him so much pain, everything about the world around him now is different enough that he’s not forced to remember the past every time he opens his eyes. Save for the woman next to him, Murphy has no reminders of betrayal in the desert.

Emori doesn’t look up at him when Murphy takes his place next to her, scanning the vast range of dunes and hills in front of them. More light fades from the sky with every moment, and he wonders how they’re supposed to see anything. The moon is nearly full, but Murphy still doubts his ability to be able to see a threat in the sands, and it won’t always be so bright. Murphy waits until the sun has fully set and the moon has risen before asking about it.

“I don’t know if you have super Grounder eyesight, or something, but I can’t see a thing out there.” Okay, so it’s not really a question, but Murphy’s confident Emori will understand.

“It’s not about seeing things, it’s about movement. If you try to look for any object in the Dead Zone, you’ll never see anything but sand. If you watch the sand for a shadow shifting where it shouldn’t be, you’ll see it’s not as Dead as outsiders think,” Emori doesn’t lift her eyes from the sea of dust, and Murphy shakes his head, scanning the sands even though he doesn’t see how perceiving motion is going to be any easier than seeing something out of place.

“Well, what about behind us?” Even if she’s telling the truth about movement, Murphy’s confident a trick like that isn’t going to prevent something from simply approaching from another direction.

“Behind us is North. If anything can make it past the mines, we likely wouldn’t stand a chance, anyway.” Murphy glances over his shoulder, trying to see something past the other dunes that protect their little valley to prove or disprove her statement, but unable to. He’d thought he had come farther than that, but perhaps he’d been walking in circles. He never would have known, blind panic doesn’t make for well planned escape routes.

If she is telling the truth, and Murphy has no real reason to suspect she’s not beyond reminding himself that she has betrayed him in the past, that’s good. He knows where the minefield is, and if he decides to get away from Emori and Braham, having a firm idea of where he’s getting away from will help him. But the concept of facing the sands alone is extremely unappealing, so Murphy simply files that information away for now.

“This is where you sent me, then,” Murphy doesn’t really mean to say it, but remembering the minefield, with Emori sitting next to him, brings his mind back to her whispered direction, and her using him as a hostage seconds prior. His mouth tastes bitter as he thinks about it, and Murphy wishes that she had taken any of the others of their group for that, it would be easier to face her now without his emotions being all tied up.

“It is.”

“You knew the mines were here, back then?” Murphy hopes she’ll say no, but he knows that she must have. If she knew the City of Lights was here, there’s no way she could not have known about the mines.

“I did.”

“Had you ever managed to see what was beyond them?” 

“No.” 

Somehow that helps a little, knowing she wasn’t deliberately setting them up for failure, but Murphy still feels the sickening heat of old betrayal sitting in the pit of his stomach.

“So you robbed us, knocked me out, and then sent us to get blown up, is that it?” Murphy doesn’t genuinely want an answer, he simply bites the words into the air.

“Yes, yes, and no. I told you which way the City of Lights was because I knew if anyone was capable of making it beyond the mines, it was you and your people.” 

Murphy doesn’t know how to respond to that, the knowledge that she hadn’t been trying to kill him warring with the memory of the feeling on her knife on his throat and the sound of the explosion that had vaporized Harris.

“Does the past matter so much to you, John?” Emori spares Murphy from coming up with a response by asking a question of her own, and Murphy leans forward to scoop up a handful of sand as he considers it. He doesn’t want to be honest, has never really enjoyed the taste of it, but she hadn’t lied to him and he feels that he owes at least what small amount of truth he knows.

“I killed people because of the past,” the grains of sand ticking slowly through his fingers are cold, and he wishes they held some of the heat of the day, still. The dust seems to drain some of the heat of bitterness from his emotions, now he just feels nauseous at the memories, “I’ve done horrible things, ruined my life time and time again because I tried to make things even.”

Emori doesn’t push him as Murphy pauses, watching the sand form a small pile beneath his hand as he tilts it over, then watching the pile get brushed away to nothing by the wind. Obviously he had cared about the past, he had built so much of who he was on revenge, and then a ‘fresh start’ that was really just a way to not deal with consequences. He still doesn’t regret what he’s done, not any of it, and Murphy wonders if it might not be simpler if he didn’t just let things go. If he could be like the sand, not holding onto the impacts of the actions of the past.

“Yeah, I guess it does matter to me,” Murphy sighs and looks up at the stars. It’s easier to be honest when he can pretend Emori is some manifestation of a conscience, rather than a real person. He pretends he’s reading a poem when the words get too real, “revenge has been such a part of me, I don’t know what I would be without it.”

“I could help you with that,” Emori’s voice is soft, and Murphy turns to face her, honesty on his part done and the reality of her existence allowed to set back in again.

“How?” Murphy’s heart feels impossibly heavy, dreading her advice. He doubts he’ll be able to follow it, doubts that there is any way in this world for him to change himself so drastically, even if he were to accept her help. Murphy doesn’t expect to feel her gloved hand covering his, but he finds he doesn’t mind it, heat radiating from the bandagings welcome against the chill night air.

“Think of our past, before I saved you, back when you thought you were saving me. Think of when I held a blade to your throat,” Emori holds his eyes with her own, and Murphy knows that his emotions must be obvious on his face. Betrayal, even though she had given them directions to the City of Light, had hurt, and only by ignoring it had he managed to not want to kill Emori and Braham. Being told to focus on only the bad makes him want to relapse to his old patterns, but he holds to the comfort of Emori’s hand on his and restrains himself to his thoughts.

“Now let it go,” Emori’s hand squeezes his slightly, and Murphy is about to tell her that it’s not that simple, but then she cuts of all words of his with one motion.

Emori leans across the desert air between them and presses her lips to his. Murphy freezes for a moment, the desire for revenge warring with the current and oh-so-present feeling of the softness of her lips, the slight scratch of wind chapping at the edges. Then his mind decides to take pity on him and gives itself over to the moment, past forgotten in favour of the present. Murphy reaches up with a hesitant hand that he brushes along Emori’s jaw and wraps around the back of her neck, kissing her back and feeling her smile in response.

It’s a slow kiss, light movements of their weather worn lips together, not about passion, but more about creating a clean point for them to start from. From this kiss, long drawn out beneath the moon, wind whistling grains of sand past them. Murphy’s hand on Emori’s skin erases the memory of her knife on his, and in her, Murphy manages to move on from the past, at least one specific aspect of it. They kiss long past when the last hint of desire for vengeance is burned out by a different form of desire within Murphy, and Murphy is the one to pull away with a sigh, eyes fixating on Emori’s smile.

“You’ll help me like that every time?” Murphy feels his own lips curling to echo her expression, and he feels better than he has in ages.

“As often as you need.” 

There’s some small hint of emotion in Emori’s smile, betrayed in the slight flush on her cheeks, that suggests she may not be opposed to ‘helping’ him when he doesn’t strictly need it. Murphy decides not to mention it, lest she rescind her offer.

**Author's Note:**

> ((I went to upload this yesterday and my computer shut down before I clicked post, so sad))
> 
> So this was originally supposed to be a loooot longer (and smutty, it was going to end in sex and murder) but I misread the due date and thought it was the 1st, not the 10th, so I had to send it off to be edited before I went out of town. Oh well, I think it's still a decent story! And go me for finishing well in advance of a deadline for once, that's fabulous. Huge thanks to [coldsaturn](http://coldsaturn.tumblr.com) for the edit, y'all should love her as much as I do considering she caught stuff that would have been important in the 'long' ending, but made very little sense in this version. Also, thanks to the anonymous elves (idk who runs it) behind [The 100 Rarepair Challenge](http://thehundredrarepairs.tumblr.com), this was a lot of fun and you guys did awesome at keeping everything organized!
> 
> Come chat with me [on tumblr](http://jonnmurphy.tumblr.com), and as always, thanks for comments/views/kudos <3


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